I keep hearing the market is bad, but this article just seems to make it worse and worse. Have any of you been a victim of loss of employment? Is it really this bad?
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I keep hearing the market is bad, but this article just seems to make it worse and worse. Have any of you been a victim of loss of employment? Is it really this bad?
yes lost employment due to a shift in the market.
Also got more work in other areas.
IT is not as good as it once was but it is what I want to do (until I can afford not to do anything)
I have the impression that it's improving, no?
I have now been unemployed for over 2½ years. My in box gets several hits a day from "matches" to my online CV, but most of them are hopeless, and how they "matched" is beyond my comprehension. One I have had several times is as a buyer for childrens toys for a supermarket chain - go figure that one out!
I think the recruiting firms send progressively more and more fringe relevent jobs to show that they are at least doing something, and that sending nothing for a couple of weeks would have people calling them to find out what was wrong.
The colleges and universities churn out inexperienced newbies. These are cheap to employ and some find work, for the rest, they are generally not encumbered by mortgages and other trappings of middle class life, so a "temporary" excursion into burger flipping or table waiting doesn't impact.
Firms that have a project, recruit consultants and contractors that they can be rid of when the need goes away. With the global economy so slow, firms are not investing in new IT systems. They are struggling to survive themselves as demand for their products is slow. Thus service industries like IT suffer because the client firms "make do" with what they've got until the market picks up.
The market has been said to pick up in 2-3 quarters, the wise men that say that have been saying it for some years now. It's a bit stale.
I was out of work for 8 months before I landed this job. Hooray.
This is exactly the reason why I've chosen to go into engineering instead of computer science. I figure, if I get a degree in a harder major, and do at least SOME research (I'm setup to be doing a project with voice recognition software using Neural Nets, because one professor was impressed with some of the other stuff I was doing) I'll have a better chance of getting a job I want, with the proper benefits and reasonable salary.Quote:
Originally Posted by adrianxw
Engineering is harder? Why is this? What makes it so much harder?Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkness
I have an engineering degree. If the jobs aren't there they aren't there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkness
This was my belief. It is my opinion that the jobs aren't there in any field really, except medicine maybe(i have heard there are jobs in this, nursing, pharmacy, etc).Quote:
Originally Posted by Govtcheez
I mean your chances of a job with a degree in English, or say Psychology are pretty slim also. My best advice to the original poster is to do what you want to do and try not to do it just for the money, unless of course you are ok with that. I mean this is something you are going to be doing every single day of your life. If you can find something you REALLY love then you are in great shape:) The hard part is finding what you really love to do.
Because instead of being a code monkey you actually design real world things. It's quite a bit more difficult than someone just saying "write this"Quote:
Originally Posted by SourceCode
Interesting viewpoint thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Govtcheez
If you have a degree already then granted you know more about the situation than I do. But it still seems it's in a much better condition than the IT industry.Quote:
I have an engineering degree. If the jobs aren't there they aren't there.
edit:
Few questions: which field of engineering? What job? When did you get the degree? Anything else about it/the situation you might like to add.
edit1:
On the flipside, having a degree in engineering might not always be helpful, as companies pay more for engineers and may often have a harder time affording them.
> which field of engineering?
Computer Engineering
> What job?
Right now I'm just programming; in Access, no less. Beats the hell out of working at Blockbuster, which is what I was doing.
> When did you get the degree?
December of last year, Kettering University.
> Anything else about it/the situation you might like to add.
College was cool, working sucks.
> may often have a harder time affording them.
Any company that can't afford a couple extra grand a year probably isn't going to be a company much longer.
there are a lot of jobs being lost and thats because india and other countries have IT proffesionals that are just as good as the people over here but only get paid like 10000 a year, which is a lot of money over there. and you cant really expect companies not to outsource jobs, when they can pay wages (legally) that are below what is considered minimum here. :rolleyes:
>>and you cant really expect companies not to outsource jobs
Once upon a time in a land far, far from here there was a company with social responsibility.
A company that did things out a motive not associated with increasing its profit.
> there was a company with social responsibility
That fairy tale sucks.
My wife just got a job this week after being unemployed since March. The jobs just aren't there, especially when you don't have experience (She has only been out of school for a year and a half and didn't really have applicable experience.)Quote:
Originally Posted by caroundw5h
I am going to play devil's advocate here, just so the other side of the story can come out, but try not to take it the wrong way, because I know where you are coming from. Here's the conservative approach:Quote:
Originally Posted by novacain
- The purpose of a business is to create profit
- Telling CEOs of companies who they can and cannot hire is viewed as un-American.
- If you were the CEO of a company, can you honestly say you would hire fewer Americans, at a greater cost, and hurt your profits?
edit:
It's also a bit sketchy for me to say too much as I'm still a student, and I'm not burdened with the real life dilemma of needing to find a career, yet. I just hope the economy fluxes in my favor by the time I get a degree.
Sept 2001 out of work until June 2002. Worked form June 2002 until March 2004, then lost job again. Now I have to jobs one as a test proctor and the other as a sales clerk. Now, making 60% less than I used to. If it gets any worse I'm going back to my coconut tree with its oceanic view.
When the economy is bad, the question is how long can your industry "rides the wave before your affected."
Anyway I still have C/C++ :p
Quote:
Originally Posted by ober
In your experience do you find that if you have expereince on projects like on sourceforge and freshmeat that they would be impressed or more inclined to hire you? I was just wondering because alot of these ads say "degree or relevant experience" and i was curious what that entailed.
>>In your experience do you find that if you have expereince on projects like on sourceforge and freshmeat that they would be impressed or more inclined to hire you? I was just wondering because alot of these ads say "degree or relevant experience" and i was curious what that entailed.
If you don't have a degree in Australia there is no chance unless you have over a decade of experience. Online stuff is usually not accepted by the recruiters here as they have no experience of it.
- The purpose of a business is to create profit
Sure.
But the current business model is you have to increase profit each quater.
Trouble is there is finite amounts of profit to be had.
Business is now looking at cost saving to get the increases in profit.
The areas they are targeting are wages and safety.
The government goes along with the wages as if we have too much disposable income there will be a rise in inflation.
- Telling CEOs of companies who they can and cannot hire is viewed as un-American.
Not all of us live in America but I get the point.
The point is to maintain the local economy. As a small cog in the whole.
Where are the companies workers spending their wages?
What compensation are the workers receiving when their jobs are sent overseas?
- If you were the CEO of a company, can you honestly say you would hire fewer Americans, at a greater cost, and hurt your profits
I think you mean more local workers at a greater cost, and hurt your profits.
Yes. If I could still make a profit.
But then I am not paid millions more if the share price increases.
Look up the relative increases in executive pay to 'blue collar' wages over the last decade. Then tell me the company can't afford a local workforce.
I actually agree with a lot of what you've said novacain, and I'm glad you took what I said the right way. I just think that there's not enough of a conservative view on these forums, so I decided to say what I thought one would say, just for the sake of discussion.
edit:
Blerg, yeah :)Quote:
Not all of us live in America but I get the point.
Yep againQuote:
I think you mean more local workers at a greater cost, and hurt your profits.
And you're right, those that run the companies want the big profit.Quote:
But then I am not paid millions more if the share price increases.
Look up the relative increases in executive pay to 'blue collar' wages over the last decade. Then tell me the company can't afford a local workforce.